“Q. Did you ever go with these women? A. They are very strong, and pull me, and make me go with them. Q. Where did you go? A. Up to Mr. Putnam’s, and make me hurt the child. Q. Who did make you go? A. A man that is very strong, and these two women, Good and Osburn; but I am sorry. Q. How did you go? What do you ride upon? A. I ride upon a stick or pole, and Good and Osburn behind me; we ride taking hold of one another; don’t know how we go, for I saw no trees nor path, but was presently there when we were up.”
The child above referred to was Ann Putnam, daughter, twelve years old, of Thomas and Ann Putnam, who resided from two to three miles north-west from the parsonage. This girl, Ann, was one of the excessively bewitched; that is, was one of the most impressible and mediumistic members of The Circle. Tituba and her two fellow-prisoners had, either all as spirits, or she as a conscious spirit and the other two as apparitions, visited that child at her home; and, according to her own apprehension, the three women all mounted one pole, rose up into the air, and were forthwith at Mr. Putnam’s, having noticed neither path nor trees on the way. No reader will apprehend that Tituba’s physical body then left the house of Mr. Parris and went off two miles or more, on a winter’s night, to Mr. (Thomas) Putnam’s house. She says that they were “presently [instantly] there.” It was only her spirit form—thought form—that went riding upon a pole above all woods and paths. But why to Thomas Putnam’s? Probably because his wife and his daughter, as subsequent events showed, were both intensely mediumistic or susceptible to influence by thought beings; they were persons upon whom such beings could work efficiently; and that was the special reason, probably, for a visit to them. “The man” may well be presumed to have possessed perceptive powers that could determine with much accuracy what persons in all the region round about possessed the constitutional properties and the surroundings which would permit them to become pliable and serviceable implements in executing any scheme he had devised. Subsequent events proved that he selected and used such as enabled him, through intense human agony and bloodshed, to break in pieces and abolish a most cramping and enslaving creed devil-ward, which, like a horrid and disabling nightmare, had for centuries been depressing and agonizing all Christendom. Whatever was his design, his selection of instrumentalities facilitated the out-working of a broad and happy emancipation from vast mental evil. It abolished prosecutions for witchcraft throughout both America and Europe.
The ostensible object of that mental journey was to hurt the child. Such was the man’s apparent intention. That man was “very strong,” and he accomplished his purpose. Ann was hurt. His will-power was such, that, having once got hold of the elements of three susceptible and ignorant women, they were completely under his control. Tituba, who seems to have been always a conscious medium, yielded perforce to him. Her own selfhood fought against his cruelties, and she felt sorry for what she was forced to do. When under examination she made free confession of her involuntary participation in the tormenting invasions upon innocent girls, thus unwittingly jeopardizing her own life. She seems to have been frank and truthful.
“Q. How long since you began to pinch Mr. Parris’s children? A. I did not pinch them at first, but they made me afterward. Q. Have you seen Good and Osburn ride upon a pole? A. Yes; and have held fast by me; I was not at Mr. Griggs’s but once; but it may be send something like me; neither would I have gone, but they tell me they will hurt me.”
Her statement that “it may be send something like me,” shows her belief, and probably her knowledge, that her “very strong” “something like a man” was able to produce the apparition of a mediumistic person even where such person had no consciousness of being present. Spirits, in modern times, often produce such effects, and show thereby that Tituba’s comprehension of the case may have been in harmony with the nature of things, and strictly correct. She repeats again that her participation in the affairs was forced—that others made her pinch.
“Tituba. Last night they tell me I must kill somebody with a knife. Q. Who were they that told you so? A. Sarah Good and Osburn, and they would have had me kill Thomas Putnam’s child last night. (The child also affirmed that at the same time they would have had her cut off her own head; for if she would not, they told her Tituba would cut it off. And then she complained at the same time of a knife cutting her. When her master hath asked her (Tituba?) about these things, she saith they will not let her tell, but tell her if she tells, her head shall be cut off.) Q. Who tells you so? A. The man, Good, and Osburn’s wife. (Goody Good came to her last night when her master was at prayer, and would not let her hear, and she could not hear a good while.) Good hath one of those birds, the yellow-bird, and would have given me it, but I would not have it. And in prayer-time she stopped my ears, and would not let me hear. Q. What should you have done with it? A. Give it to the children, which yellow-bird hath been several times seen by the children. I saw Sarah Good have it on her hand when she came to her when Mr. Parris was at prayer. I saw the bird suck Good between the fore-finger and long-finger upon the right hand.”
Those statements relating to the use of the knife, apparently volunteered by Tituba and confirmed by the child, are quite suggestive. Assuming that there was present with them some powerful male spirit bent upon forceful action, and who, through Tituba and other impressibles, had obtained some palpable hold upon certain human forms and the affairs of external life, it was in his power to excite in the minds of any and all who had then been brought into rapport with himself, such ideas as those relating to the knife, and also to make the psychologized girl experience the sensation of being actually cut by it. Such would now be deemed an easy feat by any fair psychologist, either in the gross form or out of it, provided he had a favorable subject on whom to operate.
The same spirit, too, drawing elements from Mrs. Good, and using them, could make Tituba feel as though Mrs. Good was by her side and making her suddenly deaf in prayer-time, even though it was the male spirit himself who then closed her ears.
Evidences of mediumistic capabilities in either the afflicted or the afflicters are worthy of distinct observation, and therefore we draw attention to the statement that the yellow-bird “hath been several times seen by the children.” Therefore the sufferers were clairvoyants, as well as the accused.
“Q. Did you never practice witchcraft in your own country? A. No; never before now.”